Abstract PR002: Advanced melanoma exhibits a diversity of evolutionary routes to lethality
Authors: Alexander Coulton, Irene Lobon, Lavinia Spain, Andrew Rowan, Desiree Shnidrig, Scott Shepherd, Ben Shum, Fiona Byrne, Lewis Au, Kim Edmonds, Ellie Carlyle, Alexandra Renn, Christina Messiou, Charlotte Spencer, Andreas M. Schmidt, Zayd Tippu, Aljosja Rogiers, Max Emmerich, Camille Gerard, Husayn Pallikonda, Cristina Naceur-Lombardelli, Floris Foijer, Hilda van den Bos, René Wardenaar, Diana Spierings, Kate Young, Lisa Pickering, Andrew Furness, Elaine Borg, Miriam Mitchison, David Moore, Mary Falzon, Ian Proctor, Ruby Stewart, Ula Mahadeva, Anna Green, James Larkin, Charles Swanton, Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, Kevin Litchfield, Samra Turajlic
Journal: Cancer Research (2022)

Abstract Despite recent advances in the treatment of advanced melanoma using immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), 5-year overall survival remains suboptimal. A clear understanding of the potential evolutionary trajectories of melanoma is needed in order to advance treatment and prognostic options. Here we present the Posthumous Evaluation of Advanced Cancer Environment (PEACE) study of advanced melanoma, revealing a diversity of evolutionary pathways to lethality. This interim analysis of our 50-patient cohort comprises 14 ICI-treated patients with a mixture of phenotypic subtypes, including cutaneous, acral, mucosal and melanoma of unknown primary. The sampling regime encompasses a broad range of visceral metastases from various organ sites, with a total of 573 tumor samples (an average of 40 samples per patient). Our data span a variety of modalities, including exomic, transcriptomic, panel sequencing, single cell sequencing, FISH, and radiological data. Clonal phylogenies of patients were diverse in structure: some followed a linear evolutionary trajectory with little to no branching, whereas others followed a branched evolutionary pattern. We also observed various patterns of metastatic seeding, with both monoclonal and polyclonal cases of seeding. In addition, patients treated with chemotherapy showed higher subclonal mutational burden than those without. As with previous literature, we found extensive copy number alterations in these advanced melanomas. In contrast, however, our data also reveal patients with no incidence of WGD, with previous work finding this to be a ubiquitous feature of advanced melanoma. In cases of WGD, the majority of copy number alterations were losses rather than gains. In terms of treatment resistance, we observed loss of heterozygosity in key genes of the antigen presentation pathway (most notably B2M), and little signal of neoantigen loss via immunoediting, indicating that these tumors develop resistance to ICI regardless of neoantigen burden. A further question of interest was the determination of lesion-level factors influencing response to ICI treatment using radiological data. MYC amplification was significantly associated with non-responding lesions, whilst PBX1, a promoter of natural killer cells, was shown to be significantly amplified in responding lesions. Our single-cell data reveal a case of polyclonal seeding at the level of whole-genome doubling. This has implications for sample-level phylogenies that are inferred from copy-number status, indicating that intra-tumor heterogeneity at the level of copy number could confound these trees. We also find a potentially novel driver of melanoma, PHF3. This gene has previously been associated with UV DNA-damage response, however here it was found in a non-sun damaged melanoma to have a clonal, focal 7n copy number gain in an otherwise diploid cancer, with corresponding upregulation of expression. In summary, our study comprises an extensive intra-patient, multi-lesion analysis of advanced melanoma, with important implications in both technical and clinical settings. Citation Format: Alexander Coulton, Irene Lobon, Lavinia Spain, Andrew Rowan, Desiree Shnidrig, Scott Shepherd, Ben Shum, Fiona Byrne, Lewis Au, Kim Edmonds, Ellie Carlyle, Alexandra Renn, Christina Messiou, Charlotte Spencer, Andreas M. Schmidt, Zayd Tippu, Aljosja Rogiers, Max Emmerich, Camille Gerard, Husayn Pallikonda, Cristina Naceur-Lombardelli, Floris Foijer, Hilda van den Bos, René Wardenaar, Diana Spierings, Kate Young, Lisa Pickering, Andrew Furness, Elaine Borg, Miriam Mitchison, David Moore, Mary Falzon, Ian Proctor, Ruby Stewart, Ula Mahadeva, Anna Green, James Larkin, Charles Swanton, Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, Kevin Litchfield, Samra Turajlic. Advanced melanoma exhibits a diversity of evolutionary routes to lethality [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on the Evolutionary Dynamics in Carcinogenesis and Response to Therapy; 2022 Mar 14-17. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(10 Suppl):Abstract nr PR002.